Stripped Away
by Dusk and Dawn
Summary: This new life is a little more than one mind could accept. When it looks like everything you believed could be false and your very foundation is put up to the test, will you be able to keep the faith? :Not a romance. Strong theology.:


_**(A/N): This is a side one-shot to our story Cascading Melody in line with the recent chapter eighteen. As was stated, there is no romance and if you're one who is sensitive to the use of religious material by people who believe that **_it is more**_ than fairytale, either please be kind to the views of others and leave only respectful remarks or just don't read this story. There's better stuff written out there anyway. The title of this comes from a song by Desciple that works as a kind of theme song for this little thing. It's worth a listen. _**

He clutched the crucifix in his hands tightly and shut his eyes against the tickle of tears. There was no breeze, there was no sound, just him alone with his thoughts and regrets. They'd been growing ever stronger as of late and he had had enough.

With this life he'd awoken to three years ago, holding onto his Faith was as much of a battle as the actual war going on around him. The universe had turned out to be far bigger than he'd expected and far more complicated than he had ever thought possible. Not only was he having to accept its vastness and quirky functioning, he was also having to simultaneously swallow the information he was given about his own personal existence: the fact that he wasn't suppose to exist. If he had the _right_ to exist.

The people who found him called themselves the Organization. For all intents and purpose it wasn't very big, but the young man soon found out that size didn't matter. The Organization was seeking to get back the hearts of its members. Did their quest, though, give them the right to deprive others of that same right to live whole? How did taking other people's hearts change anything? That was one of the subjects that really bothered him the most. Xemnas had explained it very articulately on several occasions but once he was alone the doubts would always slowly come back.

Where was his God now?

He looked down at the vast emptiness below him. Somewhere beyond the blackness there were rocks. It wouldn't hurt too much, surely, and not long at all if he landed right...He closed his eyes again and held his cross tighter, feeling the three prongs of the end dig into his skin painfully, comfortingly.

His father had been a preacher; he'd been raised on the Bible since before preschool! The world he had found himself in after _the attack_ seemed to challenge everything he'd thought he'd known. How could this world—and many others—exist and not contradict the Holy Book he had grown up with? And how could he live each day while those he now called his friends snuffed out hundreds of lives; dragging his ethics through the mud on top of everything else?

So many questions that he didn't have an answer for. The one place he thought he could trust to always find the answer gave him little comfort these days. A sharp pang of guilt shot through him at that thought. There was one person, however, with whom he could talk about such topics with. He'd discovered him in the most unlikely of people under equally surprising circumstances.

The rosary had fallen off of the top shelf in Xigbar's room while Demyx was reaching for the box of ammunition he'd been sent after that happened to be in the same spot as the prayer beads. Rather ironic, Demyx thought at the time, but it had given him hope. He was on equal ground with someone at last and could finally get his musings off his chest. Though he himself was not Catholic, he could hardly contain his excitement as he rushed to return to the gunner.

They hadn't gotten too far—Xigbar having to stress that he'd never been a Mass kind of guy, even when he had been a Somebody. "How is the universe like _this_ when the Bible says _that_?" Was an example of how many of their conversations concerning the topic went. It soon became a pastime and a goal when they had the time, to pour over the old book looking for reassurance while the worlds slipped into chaos around them.

All of that was falling into shambles as well. Every bit of comfort he'd gotten from speaking to the elder elf was forgotten in light of his own uncertainty. The air was cold where he stood. He took a step closer to the edge of the Alter of Naught. It hurt to have his Faith shaken, really _hurt._ Their emotions might not work right from time to time but they had them still. Demyx sometimes wished he didn't. It would have solved a lot of problems, made for less questions, saved him from this...

"If you are real..." Over the last few days he'd come to the conclusion that He probably wasn't, "then I'm really sorry." He said to the starry sky, Kingdom Hearts a hazy peach above him. Tears that he had managed to contain slowly found their way down his pale cheeks as he took the last step. _'I do want to be saved...'_

And with that he leaned forward, head angled down and ready to end it all. The cross, from the very same rosary he'd gotten from Xigbar, was now clutched to his chest as he fell. The air through his hair felt deceptively nice as the whisk of the wind hummed a farewell past his ears.

His body lurched to a sudden stop. He cracked open an eye in confusion to find that the ground was still some feet away.

"How?" His physical heart beat rapidly as he felt himself begin to rise.

Slowly he was being pulled back up towards the Alter of Naught, though he was still facing the darkness that inevitably marked the ground. Seconds later arms wrapped their way under his shoulders and he was yanked forcibly the rest of the way onto the platform.

"Don't..." Xigbar's breathing was heavy and his exposed eye was bright in relief and anger, "_ever_" he stressed the word hard, "try something like that again."

The older man loosened his grip after getting a furious head nod in answer to his command. He sighed and sat down with a plop and glared at Demyx who was furiously wiping at his eyes.

His face was hot from adrenaline and embarrassment. He'd never felt so weak and he hated that the other man had to see him like this. "Sorry..." He mutter meekly, unsure what one was suppose to say after a failed suicide. Xigbar acknowledged this with a huff and an awkward silence fell between them. Neither moved, just sat in the half light offered by the unnatural moon and collected themselves.

The gunner was the one to break the silence. "I guess somebody was watching out for you." He said with a half smirk. He turned his gaze behind him at the tattered book that lay a little ways away—having been abruptly dropped when its holder had seen two black boots going over the edge of the platform—and holding out his hand, using his gift to bring it to him. "Our little conversation from last night wouldn't get out of my head today." He began as he opened the book and moved towards the two newest bookmarks in it. "I was getting a shirt out of my drawer when this thing fell of the dresser and landed open, some of the pages bent inward and marking off two different sections."

Demyx was curious now. His heartbeat was slowly returning to normal and a sense of surrealism was setting in. "To humor the moment," Xigbar continued, "I read both the pages indicated and I'll tell you what, a few things certainly stood out. They went right along with what we had just been talking about. "Job thirty-eight, verse eighteen: 'Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? Declare if thou knowest it all. Where is the way where the light dwelleth? And as for the darkness where is the place thereof, that thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?'"

He looked up to see if this made sense to his listener before flipping to the other place where his thumb already rested, "St. John, one, verses one through four, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and that life was the light of men.'"

Demyx was silent to this and so Xigbar continued to talk, "I thought it was oddly fitting so I went off to find you. Instead I found that little apology letter on top of your pillow and nearly had a heart attack—pun intended this time." He sighed when he didn't even get a chuckle at that. "I didn't think I was going to make it in time." He admitted.

The young musician brought his legs up and looped his arms under his knees, subconsciously trying to appear smaller under the reprimanding gaze of his superior. He felt guilty, for doubting, for forgetting how much comfort he truly gained from the other man's company. He felt sick. "Sorry." He said again, still shaken by what he had almost done—only now did his mind realize that—and by the strange and unassuming event that led to Xigbar being there in time to save him.

"Anyway," Xigbar spoke again, his voice no longer stern, "all that to say this: the God we thought we knew and His world are still what we have around us. He has always worked in ways that have been intense and bigger than what our minds can understand."

"Safe to say," Demyx's voice was soft, "He sure seems to know what he's doing even if we don't."

Xigbar nodded. "Now, that's one thing out of the way; onto another: In that little note of yours you also touched on the subject of gathering hearts. I thought we'd explained that several times little dude!"

"I don't know..." The blonde admitted with some difficulty.

"If we succeed in getting our _own_ hearts back that paves the way for—if not simultaneously— returning everyone else's." He said, putting it in the simplest terms he knew how to.

"But how do we know for sure?"

"What were we just talking about?" The older man asked incredulously. "Sometimes, you just have to have a little faith."


End file.
